The distinguished scholar Steven Feld shaped the field of the anthropology of sound and music. In this new work, he looks at the vernacular cosmopolitanism of a group of jazz players in Ghana, including some who have traveled widely, played with American jazz greats, and blended Coltrane with local instruments and philosophy. He describes their cosmopolitan outlook as an accoustemology, a way of knowing the world through sound. Feld combines memoir, biography, ethnography, and history, telling a story of diasporic intimacy and dialogue that contests both American nationalist and Afrocentric narrations of jazz history.
Sound Sentiments seeks to open a new path in the philosophy of emotion. The focus of most recent work on the philosophy of emotion has been on the nature of emotion, with some attention also to the relation of emotion to ethics. This book explores the idea that emotions admit of valuation, of degrees of adequacy. We cannot just decide what to think, or to desire, or to feel, as we can decide to act, and these attitudes are integral to emotions. Nonetheless, emotions canhave normative characteristics that resemble virtues. Philosophers are familiar with the notion that emotions are valuational. But how well they serve that function determines the value they themselves have.The book opens with an account of the theory of emotion, reflecting recent work on that, and considers the way in which emotions are valuational (with reference to the contributions of writers such as de Sousa, Gibbard, and McDowell). The worth of an emotional experience depends on the quality of the valuation it itself achieves. Most of the book is then devoted to a set of interconnected themes. Some of these concern properties that emotions can have which can variously enhance or detractfrom them: profundity, social leverage, narcissism, and sentimentality. Others are attitudes with characteristic emotional loadings, and sometimes motivations, that raise similar questions: cynicism, ambivalence, and sophistication. David Pugmire's general approach is indirect and negative: to analyseemotional foibles, which tend to elude us as we succumb to them, and thereby to point to what soundness in emotion would be. He also elicits connections amongst these aspects of the emotional life. The most pervasive is the dimension of profundity, which opens the discussion: each of the subsequent problems amounts to a way in which emotion can be shallow and slight and so amount to less than it seems; and accordingly, each identifies a form of integrity in the emotions.
How does a work of music stir the senses, creating feelings of joy, sadness, elation, or nostalgia? Though sentiment and emotion play a vital role in the composition, performance, and appreciation of music, rarely have these elements been fully observed. In this succinct and penetrating book, Charles Rosen draws upon more than a half century as a performer and critic to reveal how composers from Bach to Berg have used sound to represent and communicate emotion in mystifyingly beautiful ways.Through a range of musical examples, Rosen details the array of stylistic devices and techniques used to represent or convey sentiment. This is not, however, a listener’s guide to any “correct” response to a particular piece. Instead, Rosen provides the tools and terms with which to appreciate this central aspect of musical aesthetics, and indeed explores the phenomenon of contradictory sentiments embodied in a single motif or melody. Taking examples from Chopin, Schumann, Wagner, and Liszt, he traces the use of radically changing intensities in the Romantic works of the nineteenth century and devotes an entire chapter to the key of C minor. He identifies a “unity of sentiment” in Baroque music and goes on to contrast it with the “obsessive sentiments” of later composers including Puccini, Strauss, and Stravinsky. A profound and moving work, Music and Sentiment is an invitation to a greater appreciation of the crafts of composition and performance.
“This debut has it all: music, books, aliens, adventure, resistance, queerness, and a bold heroine tying it all together. ”—Ms. Magazine Can a girl who risks her life for books and an Ilori who loves pop music work together to save humanity? When a rebel librarian meets an Ilori commander… Two years ago, a misunderstanding between the leaders of Earth and the invading Ilori resulted in the death of one-third of the world’s population. Today, seventeen-year-old Ellie Baker survives in an Ilori-controlled center in New York City. All art, books and creative expression are illegal, but Ellie breaks the rules by keeping a secret library. When young Ilori commander Morris finds Ellie’s illegal library, he’s duty-bound to deliver her for execution. But Morris isn’t a typical Ilori…and Ellie and her books might be the key to a desperate rebellion of his own. “The Sound of Stars is a marvelous genre-bending debut." —The Nerd Daily “The Sound of Stars is a stunning exploration of the comforts that make us human and the horrors that challenge our humanity.”—K. Ancrum, author of The Wicker King "This book has everything! Aliens set on conquering earth! A determined heroine with a hidden stash of books! And the power of music and stories to give those with every reason to hate the power to love. Who could want anything more?"—Joelle Charbonneau, New York Times bestselling author of The Testing and Verify “An absolute must-read for everyone.” —Book Riot “Dow's debut is a testament to hope and the power of art.” —Buzzfeed Also by Alechia Dow: The Kindred
The legendary bass player tells the full, true story of his years with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead in this "insightful and entertaining" (Austin Chronicle) memoir of life in the greatest improvisational band in American history. In a book "as graceful and sublime as a box of rain" (New York Times Book Review), the beloved bassist tells the stories behind the songs, tours, and jams in the Grateful Dead's long, strange trip from the 1960s to the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995 and beyond. From Ken Kesey's "acid tests" to the Summer of Love to bestselling albums and worldwide tours, the Dead's story has never been told as honestly or as memorably as in this remarkable memoir. "A fun ride...Even for the most well-read Deadhead, there's enough between the covers to make Searching for the Sound worth a look." —Associated Press
Theodore Levin takes readers on a journey through the rich sonic world of inner Asia, where the elemental energies of wind, water, and echo; the ubiquitous presence of birds and animals; and the legendary feats of heroes have inspired a remarkable art and technology of sound-making among nomadic pastoralists. As performers from Tuva and other parts of inner Asia have responded to the growing worldwide popularity of their music, Levin follows them to the West, detailing their efforts to nourish global connections while preserving the power and poignancy of their music traditions.
Modern academic criticism bursts with what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick once termed paranoid readings—interpretative feats that aim to prove a point, persuade an audience, and subtly denigrate anyone who disagrees. Driven by strategies of negation and suspicion, such rhetoric tends to drown out softer-spoken reparative efforts, which forego forceful argument in favor of ruminations on pleasure, love, sentiment, reform, care, and accessibility. Just Vibrations: The Purpose of Sounding Good calls for a time-out in our serious games of critical exchange. Charting the divergent paths of paranoid and reparative affects through illness narratives, academic work, queer life, noise pollution, sonic torture, and other touchy subjects, William Cheng exposes a host of stubborn norms in our daily orientations toward scholarship, self, and sound. How we choose to think about the perpetration and tolerance of critical and acoustic offenses may ultimately lead us down avenues of ethical ruin—or, if we choose, repair. With recourse to experimental rhetoric, interdisciplinary discretion, and the playful wisdoms of childhood, Cheng contends that reparative attitudes toward music and musicology can serve as barometers of better worlds.